There is a lot of uncertainty as to the impacts of the Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR) policy on future waste composition. This is because the balance of the financial drivers on packaging producers will vary, and the decision relating to mitigating costs will also be a factor of item profitability, marketing value of the current packaging and what alternative options might be available to any specific item of packaging.

To see what the potential impacts might look like, we have assumed three high level scenarios and, for the purposes of modelling (and to keep comparable with the last blog, applied the residual waste composition data from a rural authority with no food waste collection. Under the Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM) classification of packaging materials, packaging materials are classified as Red, Amber or Green depending on how recyclable they are / whether they can be readily recycled, as follows [1] :

• Red packaging has specifications that make it difficult to recycle at scale
• Amber packaging may experience challenges during collection and sortation, requires specialist infrastructure for reprocessing, the efficiency and output quality of reprocessing is affected, or there is some secondary material loss
• Green packaging is widely recyclable in the current UK infrastructure

The three scenarios that we applied are:

1. ‘Material Substitution’ – a proportion of ‘red’ (50%) and ‘amber’ (50%) rated packaging materials move to ‘green’ alternative packaging materials in the residual waste, apportioned in accordance with the current green material composition
2. ‘Lightweighting’ – a tonnage decrease of red and amber materials, of 15% and 7.5% respectively, through lightweighting of packaging
3. ‘Material Substitution and Recycling Diversion’ – as the ‘Material Substitution’ scenario with a proportion (20%) of all subsequent ‘green’ materials are removed from the residual waste stream assuming it is then recycled.

We found that if ‘red’ and ‘amber’ materials shift to green materials under pEPR (scenario 1) then the calorific value (CV) of the waste will decrease from 8.1 MJ/kg to 7.43 MJ/kg, a notable decline ofc.8%. There is also a decrease in calorific value with the Lightweighting scenario (no. 2), reducing the CV to 7.96 MJ/kg if we assume some of the packaging is removed entirely. If we assume, after material substitution that the ‘red’ and ‘amber’ materials will shift and 20% of the new ‘green’ materials will be diverted to the relevant recycling streams (scenario 3) then the CV will again decrease significantly to 7.35 MJ/kg.

It is interesting that, whilst the material substitution and lightweighting scenarios are quite extreme ends of a spectrum and very different in terms of the response of the packaging industry to the EPR modulated fees, in both cases the CV falls (and there are different in tonnage impacts).

A combination of the two scenarios allowing for material substitution and diversion of ‘green’ materials only reduces the CV by ~0.75MJ/kg, part way between scenarios 1 and 2.

So whilst our last blog looked at the effect of Simpler Recycling and DRS on residual waste CV and tonnage for a rural authority without food waste collections in place (driving tonnages down and Calorific Value up) – it appears that pEPR is more likely to moderate this CV increase and may have a greater impact (potentially driving residual waste CV down – this is more likely to be the case if food waste collections are already in place).

The impact of policy changes on residual waste composition and CV is important to understand in the context of the implications of downstream waste treatment efficiency and cost, which may be different for each local authority.

So the title ‘hot pEPR sauce’ was a misnomer as EPR looks more likely to reduce the CV of the residual waste – but why let that get in the way of a good pun 😊!

Frith Resource Management undertake strategy modelling, collections modelling, waste composition analysis and have worked with >135 Councils on waste projects in the UK. For details see www.frithrm.com tel. 01746 552423 or email cherie@frithrm.com

[1] - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recycling-assessment-methodology-how-to-assess-your-packaging-waste#outputs-the-red-amber-green-scale